Buckeye bucking back

As previously advertised, two of the Ohio Buckeyes planted from seed last year (out of three) are showing signs of life, one (left in the snap above) rather more than the other (right). Last serious sighting at reference 1.

Having gone on about them a bit, I thought this morning that I ought to check that I had got the right plant - and as it turns out, references 2 and 3 suggest that I have. A snag being that reference 3 talks of them not liking it dry, which probably explains why they lost their leaves last summer, towards the end of the hot, dry spell. This year I shall try to be more careful about watering.

Reference 3 also tells us that these are messy trees, with plenty of droppings. Best not near houses or in ornamental beds. Which should not be a problem in this case. Also that the trees develop a tap root, which might, in the future, provide some protection against drought.

PS: plenty of seeds coming up in the compost bank behind, the bank that is to be found towards the end of reference 4. And the newts seem to be having fun with the joined up ponds - ponds which are staying joined up for longer stretches than usual, suggesting that the ground is really getting quite wet now. While the three or four tulips, to the right of the Buckeyes, mostly off snap, don't seem to be doing very well at all for some reason.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/06/week-five-plus.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesculus_glabra.

Reference 3: http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/PlantFinder/PlantFinderDetails.aspx?taxonid=281045.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/02/excavation-two.html.

Schnyder

Near a fortnight ago now to hear some Schubert from the new-to-us Schnyder Trio at the Wigmore Hall. At least, I do not remember the name and there is no trace of them in the archive. Notiwithstanding, they are now in their tenth year.

An arrangement of the song D965 and the trio D929.

The new frame house in Meadway was very nearly finished. I had been wondering whether they were planning to start a new fashion in garden sheds - perhaps there has been a piece about them in one of the weekend supplements - but it rather looks as if I was wrong. Although one might not think that a fancy fork lift truck was quite the thing to move it. In the event, it looked as if the fork lift moved the shed to the front of the drive, exit fork lift on a small low loader and a few days after that exit shed.

On station approach. I had not realised such things existed until very recently. I wonder how bad your behaviour has to be before you get locked out of your own house?

Victoria Station was closed as far as Epsom was concerned and our Waterloo train only had four coaches, so it was crowded.

Then the underground was infested with closures and partial closures, so that was pretty crowded too.

But Oxford Circus was quiet enough at pavement level, as was All Bar One. The snap being of BH marching past the bench at the north western corner of Cavendish Square where were often used to take our sandwiches before an evening performance, evening enough that the square proper was closed.

The flowers in the more or less full hall were green, yellow and white, much lighter and jollier than the ones that we had had on Good Friday, which was proper.

Concert very good, with the second piece seeming to contain lots of familiar bits, without the piece as a whole being familiar to us. I rather liked what seemed to be a lot of repetition, but perhaps that is what a proper music person would call heavy use of the first subject. I found a lot of it rather emotional.

Out to take lunch in the cafeteria near the top of John Lewis, a lunch including a tin of red wine, bottles having been discontinued. Perhaps not surprising given that very few people, if any, apart from me, were taking it. Once again surprised at what looked like a very small tin holding 250ml of quite respectable red. See reference 3 for the first occasion. But I was very disappointed with the egg roll, taken to pad out the main course. Roll soft, ensemble rather stale and soggy on the mouth.

Out to wander down Bond Street to take a look at preparations around the Palace. Some rather striking displays in Bond Street, including the one snapped above. While quite a few of the other involved stuff in the foreground and big screen telly in the background, presumably playing some suitable promotional video. Striking when novel, and presumably cheaper than building a real window display. One fancy car, bright green, not particularly large. Possibly a footballer rather than a drug dealer.

Passed the within sight of the Goat, the establishment we used to use in the margins of meetings at the Royal Institution. Across Piccadilly to walk down Gentlemen's Walk, that is to say the wide path running down the east end of Green Park. Not labelled on gmaps.

Mixed messages outside what we took to be the town house of the family that gave us Diana, Princess of Wales.

A new to us flowering shrub, seemingly running to both yellow and white flowers. Male and female? Google Image suggests that it is the Japanese bitter orange, to be found at reference 4. Not quite the same as Green Park, but very similar and I dare say there are varieties of bitter orange. Otherwise the trifoliate orange, Citrus trifoliata or Poncirus trifoliata. Of interest, inter alia, from a taxonomic point of view. We shall have to go back in the summer and see what it looks like then.

We were reminded of how ugly the Victoria monument is. Buck House would look much better without it.

Some kind of security headquarters for the big day?

I didn't remember these gates, slightly posher than the models one gets elsewhere in London. But BH says that she remembers them from last time, whenever that might have been.

I thought to sit on one of these while BH was in the royal souvenir shop. Unfortunately it was not as sturdy as it looked and I ended up on the deck - from where I was rescued by a middle aged Italian tourist who rushed over to sort me out. Shaken but not damaged and I found a concrete block to sit on instead - from where I was able to admire a couple of girls decked out with what looked like large rabbits' ears. No idea what they were up to, or where they could have been headed. Bit too informal to have been attendants at a casino.

I forget now how we got home. Probably either tube or bus to Vauxhall and then tube from there. We might have elected for the bus so as to avoid the long walk to get to the Victoria Line platform.

[The Teremana portfolio includes three expressions: blanco, reposado, and añejo. The ultra-premium Tequila brand was launched by Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson in 2020]

Probably the occasion on which I picked up three numbers of 'The Spirits Business', some sort of glossy trade magazine at the Raynes Park platform library, to be found at reference 5. One devoted to Tequila, seemingly a big drink these days, having overtaken vodka. I learn it is very cool for Californian luvvies to have their own brand. The other two numbers carrying more of a mix, of more interest to the professional than to the amateur. And not a girlie picture anywhere, so I suppose that is now against the rules. Plus a copy of a Home Office Research Study - the 2003 Citizenship Survey. Rather old fashioned in appearance, a lot of it, worthy but dull. The whole lot has now been recycled, having more than enough reading material already to hand.

Home to find that, at long last, the tits had been busy, taking a serious interest in the bird feeder. Having done more or less nothing during the winter proper.

PS: checking, it turn out that I at least had heard the second piece before, as noticed at reference 2, at the newly refurbished Elizabeth Hall, back in 2018. Making much the same comment then about familiarity as this time around.

References

Reference 1: https://www.oliverschnydertrio.ch/en.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2018/12/trio-sora-with-feet.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/06/up-hill.html. Not the same brand of tinned wine.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trifoliate_orange.

Reference 5: https://www.thespiritsbusiness.com/.

Nostalgia

In the course of a visit to St. Luke's yesterday, I indulged in a spot of nostalgia, if that is the right word, about the Market Restaurant in Whitecross Street, snapped above from Street View. 

I thought that I had been using the place for somewhere between 10 and 15 years, maybe averaging between 5 and 10 visits a year, with my order never changing: tea and bacon sandwich on crusty white. This last telling the cook to use thick sliced white rather than thin sliced white. Always inside. Which is longer than I have been doing most things. The same chap has been running the place all this time, I think from Turkey, known to take a fag outside from time to time, although the waitresses (just the odd waiter) generally turn over fairly quickly, lasting maybe a year or so.

Clientèle mainly blue collar, with sprinklings of residents, grey hairs and white collars.

In other parts of the street, there used to be a very busy street food scene, but while still present, this has not yet recovered from the interruption of the plague years. Too many of the bright young things who work the Old Street area have got used to not coming in on Thursday and Fridays, these being the days for St. Luke's.

Checking the archive this morning, in particular with the query at reference 1, suggests that I have been using the Market Restaurant since early 2012, which makes it eleven years, and using St. Luke's for a bit longer, maybe twelve years. A long-time source of cheap lunch time concerts sponsored by Radio 3, now somewhat diminished, presumably because of the Tories bearing down on the public grants for the private cultural activities of posh people who should be able to pay their own way.

In the beginning BH came few times, but we failed to discover the quick route via Balham and the Northern Line, and she found the journey a bit tiresome. I may have walked from Waterloo in the beginning, having walked up Farringdon Road to Bowling Green Road for meetings in a very modest Schlumberger office there during my days with the Home Office. But fairly early on, I discovered Bullingdons, which cut the journey from Waterloo to St. Luke's down from something like an hour to something like a quarter of an hour.

There was also a phase of taking sandwiches to eat in the churchyard before concerts - chopped egg on white or mashed sardines on brown - but it looks as if this had largely given way to bacon sandwiches from Whitecross Street by 2012. 

I remember that, for a while, the seat we used to use was used in-between times by a cigar smoker, as quite posh looking butts were often to be seen in the flower bed behind.

Then was the rather scruffy charity shop near the St. Luke's end of Whitecross Street, for a while a good source of both DVDs and books. Not used presently on the grounds that it is a bit musty and likely home for too many unwanted bugs.

The only other once-regular haunt that I can think of being the Wetherspoon's, 'The Masque Haunt', on the way to Old Street tube station.

References

Reference 1: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=bacon+whitecross.

Reference 2: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2011/03/leysian-mission.html. This appears to be notice of the very first visit to St. Luke's.

Reference 3: https://www.jdwetherspoon.com/pubs/all-pubs/england/london/the-masque-haunt-old-street. 'In Elizabethan times, the nearby gatehouse of the former Priory of St John served as the office of the Master of the Revels, who was responsible for licensing plays, masques and other entertainment for the queen. A masque was a lavish drama with music and dancing, written by the leading poets and playwrights of the day. It was performed by masked figures and had an unusual name, like the masked haunt'. The Wetherspoon's branding people are good on heritage angles!

Cheese with rabbit

A week or ago, back to London to top up on supplies of cheese, presently Montgomery from reference 1, via Neal's Yard Dairy. On this occasion, the branch in Shorts Gardens by Seven Dials. Weather uncertain so not clear that Bullingdons would be the way forward from Waterloo.

One of the trees outside the station needs a trim after attention by idle youth, dogs or both. I could take a pruning saw down myself, but it is a bit of a way and it is not my tree, not for me to meddle. We shall see.

In any event, onto the train, to be entertained by a party of ladies of middle years, all tooled up for a day on the town. One of them, perhaps the hostess, was very concerned about litter and was making regular trips to the not very big litter bin to dispose of wrappers and containers.

Not raining at Waterloo, so I pedalled off to Seven Dials. Cheese business done, the rain came on. Should I wait or settle for the tube?  I hung around in various pub doorways, thinking perhaps to take a Perrier on the rocks, to find that none of the pubs in the vicinity of Cambridge Circus opened before midday. Hoping that it would let up, I worked my way down to St. Martin's Street, behind the National Gallery and decided to chance it.

[Rotten Row and the South Carriage Drive c.1890-1900, photomechanical print. Ex wikipedia]

So off around Trafalgar Square and down the Mall. Negotiated the various obstacles around the Palace and got myself onto Constitution Hill. Up to Hyde Park Corner, across the junction using the cycle ways provided and found myself in South Carriage Drive, which runs parallel to Rotten Row, once favoured by equestrian toffs and toffesses who liked to show off. Lillie Langtry for one. Lots of space, hardly any traffic, two or four wheeled. Just a line of horse boxes parked up outside the barracks.

I thought they were operated by Oakley, but it seems from reference 4 that they are the builders of these fine horse boxes rather than the operators. But whatever the case, the boxes were not in army colours, so presumably moving the Household Cavalry about has been privatised, along with pretty much everything else that moves.

Hyde Park was springing into leafy life and there were still some daffodils, the pale ones rather than the yellow ones.

Turned into exhibition Road to find monster queues outside the Natural History Museum, apparently for some new dinosaur skeleton. Lots of tourists, lots of school aged children. Some dads not looking too thrilled.

But pleased to be able to park up at the stand next to the queue. Not so pleased, being a touch early, to find that the service in the nearest hostelry - another for Greene King - was slow to the point of being absent, so I pushed onto the rendez-vous at Daquise of reference 5.

Wine from Poland, seemingly unthinkable until recently, respectable Poles drinking beer from Poland and vodka from Russia. Wine, if they drink it at all, from France. From the Adoria operation of reference 6, set up by an expatriate Californian who appears to have emigrated to Poland about thirty years ago. Located at Zachowice, southwest of Wrocław, the city that used to be called Breslau, tucked in close to both German and Czech borders. In what used to be Silesia in Germany. Perhaps not that far from wine growing areas after all. Breslau being a place which I notice from time to time, having once read a fat paperback about its tangled history. See, for example, reference 7.

I took bread followed by rye soup, both good. Followed by rabbit, which would have been better had I asked for the yellow gravy to come in a jug. Followed by a plum cake which was very good. Washed down with an excellent drop of slivovitz, a sort of plum brandy made all over central and eastern Europe and which comes with many spellings. The Czech publican whom I used to work for (more than fifty years ago now) at the 'Hand and Shears' of reference 8 knew all about the stuff. He also made enough money to eat at the Savoy and go to the opera at weekends. In the days when publicans' wives were able to knock out real sandwiches - fine sandwiches long since killed off by the combined forces of health men and tax men.

One of the engaging features of the present establishment was the use of small aluminium saucepans to bring your food to the table. Saucepans which I had thought long banned for catering purposes on account of aluminium, in some form or another, getting into the food chain - and, at one time, Epsom car boot sales were shifting large number of such pans, originally from various schools, hospitals and other institutions in the area. The pans of choice of our early married life. And our cheerful waitress came from the Netherlands.

Still lots of people milling around when we left the restaurant, some time after 15:00.

For a change, took a tube train to Wimbledon from South Kensington and changed there for Epsom. Entertained on the tube train by the cunningly contrived workings of the joints between carriages, only just coming into service on the Epsom-Waterloo line. A smart bit of engineering, no doubt, these days, foreign.

Will I be able to reconstruct a joint from this snap in a week's time? 

While this morning I associated to the late night trains in which, years ago, I used to project all manner of goings-on onto the random dots of floor tiles, very like the ones above. Amazing what a bit of chemical assistance can bring to the tea leaves!

PS 1: from time to time I mention a fairly new to Epsom ice cream parlour called 'Creams', which I now know to be a branch of the operation at reference 2, having read all about them yesterday at reference 3. Apparently popular with young people who do not do bars - for one reason or another - and which, in some areas at least, function in much the same way as bars do for the rest of us. Invented in Southall.

PS 2: the public house to be found at reference 8 might well be a Grade I listed house dating from 1532, but in my day it used to be dingy red rather than a dingy blue, with dingy red being the Courage house colour. Did the heritage people miss a beat when they let the blue paint in? I might add that my then intimate knowledge of 'The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk During the World War' stood me in good stead with said Czech landlord, for whom it was, in the original Czech, a sort of bedside Bible. A book I still own, but have not actually read any of for quite some years now. Can't bring myself to retire it for all that.

References

Reference 1: http://www.montgomeryscheese.co.uk/.

Reference 2: https://www.creamscafe.com/.

Reference 3: London’s late-night ice-cream parlours represent the city at its best: The ubiquity of the Creams chain is a sign of the capital’s changing nocturnal tastes - Stephen Bush, Financial Times - 2023.

Reference 4: https://www.oakleyhorseboxes.co.uk/.

Reference 5: https://daquise.co.uk/.

Reference 6: http://www.adoriavineyards.com/en/.

Reference 7: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/06/breslau-drain-covers.html.

Reference 8: https://thehandandshears.com/. Once a Courage house serving the then adjacent markets and hospitals. Not the same place at all that I visited twenty years ago, in the margins of an important meeting in the City about data protection.

Reference 9: https://www.kicksbarandgrill.co.uk/crisp-party. I close with a rather different sort of establishment, brought to me by a correspondent. Maybe something for the granddaughters in years to come, should they ever take a trip to the far north, to the banks of the River Hull.

Wannabee toff

[Polina Prigozhina competed in international equestrian events despite her father being under sanctions ©Molfar]

I read in today's FT, at reference 1, that one of the daughters of the boss of the Wagner private army, the chap who used to sell hot dogs from a cart before moving onto restaurants and other bigger things, is very into show jumping - one of the chosen sports of young blue bloods in this country - not doubt also in most of the other countries of western Europe - and the children of tech billionaires in the US.

I wonder if the not-so-newly-arrived members of the club invite her to their parties? Or does she have to throw her own, lavishly funded, parties to get a hand hold on this particular greasy pole? Lashings of more or less illegal caviar?

PS 1: 'Molfar' seems to be a Ukrainian word, but, unusually, neither Bing nor Google turn up a photographer using this name. Photographers who appear in the FT are usually quite easy to find.

PS 2: I seem to recall from the Thubron book about the Amur, reading about poaching huge Amur sturgeon from the estuary, aided and abetted by the local river police. Even Putin's Russia does protected species. See reference 2.

PS 3: and while I am on, I share a diagram from the pig book noticed at references 3 and 4. A reminder from the Argentine of what we have done to the shape of pigs in our drive to get more meat out of them. In the olden days, wild boars were shoulder heavy animals, with deep chests providing plenty of room for heart and lungs. While the pigs of today are much heavier, hip heavy animals. Do they have more heart and lung flavoured problems in consequence? Or maybe they rarely live long enough for such problems to show? And again, while I am on, Davidson gives a lot of space to the apparently important and difficult matter of how best to house pigs, from where I associate to the phase in family life, perhaps forty years ago now, when quality time was given to the construction of pig houses out of brightly coloured wooden bricks, Lego and suchlike materials, houses which sometimes grew to cover a considerable patch of carpet.

References

Reference 1: Horses, art and private jets: the charmed life of Russian warlord’s family: Western governments have struggled to impose costs on relatives of the Wagner founder, even though they have been heavily involved in his businesses - Miles Johnson, Financial Times - 2023.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/11/a-trip-along-amur.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/02/return-to-chandos.html.

Reference 4: The production and marketing of pigs - H R Davidson - 1953.

Central Hall

Near a fortnight ago, a long delayed visit to Westminster Abbey, followed as it turned out by an impromptu visit to Methodist Central Hall across the road - Methodists not being keen on either abbeys or cathedrals, although some do bishops and some do superintendents.

It was, as it turned out, a bright, cool day after the rain of the day before. The stream running down from the site of the frame house, now near finished, in Meadway, was back in a small way, having been near extinguished by recent work on the drains. The temporary roof over the bungalow around the corner being turned into a dream house looked enormous. Timber frames for the new first floor well under way.

Waterloo was offline for some reason, so we entrained for London Bridge and took the Jubilee Line from there - to a Westminster Abbey which turned out to be pretty crowded. The tourists are back. And getting on for a year since our last visit, noticed at reference 1, as it happens, a religiously flavoured concert, rather than a proper visit.

Struck on this occasion by the elaborate tombs for the great and good of old arranged around the chancel, visible from the east end ambulatory. This one for the second earl of Pembroke (of reference 2, castle in Wales and college in Cambridge), a full-on medieval knight, present, for example, at the Battle of Bannockburn. The faces were presumably chopped off during the iconoclastic disturbances around the time of our Civil War.

While some of the kings went in for double decker tombs. We were not told told whether they took the upper or lower berth. Presumably wives and retainers were not sacrificed to occupy the other one, in proper pagan style. Some of these tombs were once rich with elaborate inlaid decoration, some golden if not gold, now mostly gone, and must have been conspicuously flashy when new.

Also stuck by this take on the passage of worldly glory, the sic transit gloria mundi. With Richard Busby above earning his spot by being headmaster of Westminster School for many years. He was also a strong royalist at the time of the Civil War. In any event, sufficiently in favour, at least in death, to be allowed to push Anne of Cleves aside, a lady whom one might have thought should have had precedence. One of the wives of Henry VIII who was treated relatively decently. But for Busby, see reference 3.

An artist-in-gold was in attendance, touching up various bits of gold with gold paint. At least I assume that it was not gold leaf.

We were reminded by the Hockney stained glass of the weakness of church administrators for ugly modern art. Also of the poor choice of light fittings for the nave, also rather large and ugly.

We sat for a bit in the seats provided in front of the choir screen, from where one gets quite a good view of the upper parts of the nave, but moving on as a lunch time communion service started. A service held more or less in the middle of the busy abbey. I associated to the long-off time when we were in Notre- Dame in Paris, also busy with tourists, with a society wedding going off in a railed-off chapel in the middle, roughly where St. Augustine's shrine is in this Abbey.

But given the crowds, a short visit, after which we made our way to the cafeteria for a snack, to find that at lunch time one had to take lunch. Which at that moment we did not fancy, so we decamped to Central Hall across the road where we were pleased to find that their downstairs cafeteria was up and running again, having been shut during the plague. In fact, checking this afternoon, I find that the last visit, noticed at reference 5, was not long before the onset of the plague. A memorable lunch of liver, bacon and bard. A day when I squeezed rather more into my three hours in time than would be likely now, getting on for four years later.

This time around, a very substantial portion of brisket, served with mash and baked carrots. Really very good for a cafeteria. BH settled for a large, cheese decorated mushroom in place of the brisket. Rather higher grade cutlery than one expects in such a place. And very probably much better value than we would have got in the Abbey - and a much pleasanter location - with the cafeteria in the Abbey being rather cramped and subterranean.

Upstairs to ask if we could see the main hall, to be treated instead to a personal guided tour, some results of which are to be found under the group search key below. During which we got to see the chapel, a more sensible size than the hall for regular worship, repurposed from HSBC - a branch which I may well once have used. And the hall, probably now more used for events than for worship. Quite grand and impressive, a sort of hybrid between a large cinema of old and the Masonic temple up the road. Not very holy at all, even less holy than the Abbey.

But we were told that the large dome of the ceiling was a feat of engineering, certainly for its time. Presumably directly underneath the larger dome visible in the first of the snaps above. And I was much reminded by some of the detailing - for example, the door in the middle of the snap above - by that of the roughly contemporary GOGGS, Government Offices Great George Street, just across the way and in which I spent much quality time.

We also got to stand on the balcony from which some of the forthcoming festivities at the Abbey will be broadacast.

Central Hall did rather better with their light fittings, but I forget what the central lyres are all about. I feel sure that we were told that they were about something.

Lots of anecdotes about the life and times of our guide, about the life of Central Hall in general. One of which, for example, was about her late Majesty being very pleased to find from a life-size statue that the famous Wesley, the itinerant preaching one, was a shorty of very similar height to herself.

Out to revisit the back door into Caxton House, the home of the Department of Employment  for a few years. I used to cycle up and down this ramp every working day, on my way to and from Liverpool Street Station for some years, rain or shine, light or dark. Before, as far as I can recall now, the days of gates and barriers.

Down the road, a luvvies' camper van had taken up station opposite the building which was said once to have been the home of one of the security services. No-one around to ask what they were up to. But I do learn from reference 5 that 'honeywagon' is luvvy for what to you or I might be a portaloo. Lots of fancy photography too.

And so to Victoria Station, where the upstairs Wetherspoons, from the balcony of which I once used to survey the rush hour crowds over a little something, did not look very open at all - despite, according to their web site being open from 06:00 to 24:00, seven days a week. Perhaps they take a break in the afternoons. Where there also used to be a gents convenience, tucked away under some stairs, not well known, and a lot more convenient than the facilities provided on the station proper - if any.

Back to Epsom to find, not having got wet all day, that we had just missed what looked like a sharp shower.

PS: it is sometimes a puzzle to work out how pixels turn into pictures, or in the case snapped above words, that is to say the right hand portion of the label just below the dome. Full size on my laptop, completely illegible. Thumbnailed on my laptop, reasonably legible. Here, somewhere in between.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/06/vespers.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aymer_de_Valence,_2nd_Earl_of_Pembroke.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Busby.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/08/east-pole.html.

Reference 5: https://www.on-set.com/.

Group search key: mch.

Trolley 567

Having returned yesterday's trolley to the M&S food hall and done my errands, I pushed on to East Street where I found the trolley snapped above outside Majestic Wine. That is to say the warehouse site which someone is trying to redevelop.

Went round to the back to look at their stack. Not one of theirs. Went across the road to ask at petsathome. Not one of theirs either. But the chap did say that he thought that the colour of the grips - there was no other branding - suggested Homebase.

Which was a bit further than I had intended walking, but it was a fine, pleasant morning, so off I went. To find that Homebase sport an impressively eclectic range of trolleys, some quite like this one, if not exactly like this one. But I thought that they would do. The trolley was in perfectly good order and fitted in well enough with the mixture already on offer.

From where I headed into Ewell Village and down West Street to the footbridge over the railway line, to find refurbishment of what had been the headquarters and garages for Epsom Coaches well under way. Will the story that Travis Perkins are headed there turn out to be true?

While a bit further down Blenheim Road, the bank noticed in these pages for its daisies and pyramid orchids, was sporting a fair number of cowslips.

Round the corner too. Only one previous mention of cowslips, so they must be reasonably rare in and around Epsom. At reference 3, from far away Stoneleigh.

While the Tchibo website still claims the large shed behind, empty for a month or more now, as its UK headquarters. Odd that they have not gotten around to updating it yet.

Round another corner, to find a consignment of new wooden picnic tables being delivered to TB, the old ones having been condemned, despite being of much heavier construction. Will they manage to open for the upcoming coronation?

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/04/trolley-566.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/06/trolley-518.html. I was unable to put my hand on the book about Epsom Coaches noticed here, but I am pleased to say that BH knew where to look. Even if she had wondered whether it had been chucked; coaches, not even old ones, not counting as heritage.

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/05/hell.html.

Group search key: trolleysk.

Travellers at the bottom of the garden

It seems that Martin Clunes - sometimes the cuddly doctor somewhere up in Scotland - is going to law over the rights of a couple who live on a plot of land at the bottom - or perhaps the top - of his garden. A couple who appear to have been living there for rather longer than he has. From a distance, it all looks terribly messy, not to say grubby.

The plot in question may be that snapped above from Street View. 

Glad I am not the poor sod in the Town Hall charged with sorting it all out. The sort of complaint you might think was more appropriate to Range Rover Surrey than to John Deere Dorset. Given which, perhaps the title of this post should have been: 'There be travellers at t'bottom o' t'garden...'.

PS 1: regarding poor sods, I am reminded of a piece in the same number of the Guardian about how, in the absence of regular provision, the ambulance services are being asked to deal with an increasing number of mental health cases. Which are probably not what they signed up for - or trained to deal with.

PS 2: a serious John Deere costs a good bit more than a Range Rover. Something like the 9R540 snapped above, nearly new, might cost you $US 500,000 and more. Appliance extra.

References

Reference 1: It’s traumatic: new travellers’ Dorset home challenged by Martin Clunes: A couple’s identity as Travellers, and thus their right to live on a plot near his farm, has been questioned by the actor’s lawyers - Steven Morris, Guardian - 2023.

Reference 2: https://www.deere.com/en/.

Trolley 566

This post being a little previous in that, while I did capture this trolley in the Screwfix underpass this morning, it has not yet been returned to the M&S food hall and is presently in our garage, away from the prying eyes of passers by. But it will, in all probability, be so returned tomorrow morning.

While the return of this one, in the stream coming down from the Common, where it emerges from its stretch underground at the junction of Hook Road and Longmead Road, being much less probable. Can I still muster the time and energy to haul the thing out of the stream and march it down to town? No doubt across a good number of lowered pavements, a bit of a pain when it comes to trolleys, which have a strong tendency to veer down towards the road when on them. Two hands needed.

On the other hand, the grappling hook is ready and waiting, hung up at the front of the garage.

Total score so far, one trolley.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/04/trolley-565.html.

Group search key: trolleysk.

More animal consciousness

The piece at reference 1 caught my eye in the latest number of the (very useful) EAORC bulletin, which can be found at reference 2. A piece in the online magazine called ‘The Conversation’, itself to be found at reference 3. A magazine which I have come across before, and which it might be worth keeping an eye on.

Caught my eye, partly because it was about the consciousness (or not) of animals, partly because the author, a philosophy professor called Patricia MacCormack, comes from the same Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge where my younger brother used to teach music – this in a music department which seemed (from a distance) to be more interested in world music, electronic music and experimental music than in the highly organised music of the western classical tradition which interested him.

And if the long list of activities offered at reference 4 is anything to go by, the philosophy department looks to be a similarly broad church, content to leave the likes of Plato and the early Church Fathers to their colleagues to the west, on the other side of the railway tracks.

I might also say that the Cambridge campus was once known as the Tech. A place which I once thought of for myself for my A-levels, an idea firmly stamped on by my parents. I am pretty sure now that they were right so to do! I did take clarinet lessons in one of the music sheds out back, lessons of which there is now little if any trace. Sheds neither, I dare say. But I do remember that my clarinet teacher had done time in seaside bands, which he told me was just the thing for one’s sight reading skills.

Back with MacCormack, I get the impression that she cares about animal rights and that she is suspicious of main stream neuroscience’s exploration of the consciousness of animals. Partly out of distaste for the sort of things that are still done to animals in the name of science – for example, finding out how surprisingly well rats get on if you remove the top parts of their brains at birth – partly out of a suspicion that it is all a wheeze to sanitise a free-for-all when it comes to animals deemed to be unconscious, or at least so little conscious as not to count, and lastly from a belief that it is likely that some animals have forms of consciousness which we as humans are never going to understand or appreciate. In any case, having respect for other animals in general is more important than the details.

I have more time for the first of these than for the second and third, but it does no harm to be reminded of the issues from an angle other than one’s own. As a species, we do have a long history of treating all animals great and small rather badly. 

Along the way she mentions a book by Carol Adams (reference 5) which I don’t think I will bother with. But she also mentions a paper about animal consciousness (reference 6) which I did bother with. I did no more than skim it, but it seems like a perfectly reasonable effort to provide a scoring system for the consciousness of animals, a system which took both different dimensions (ten of them) and different degrees into account – going rather beyond just saying that this or that animal is conscious or not. 

Which reminded me of a vaguely similar scoring system used in my day in government procurements, organised in terms of mandatory and desirable requirements. One could then argue about whether to score mandatory requirements, whether you either satisfy them or you don’t or whether you allow good and not-so-good satisfaction. Desirable requirements were generally scored by adding up the scores for the various requirements. An important, but sometimes tiresome, part of all this was to ensure fair play by setting out the scoring system in advance – sometimes tiresome because one often learns a good deal during procurements, learning which might otherwise have informed the scoring system.

I also learn of something called trace conditioning, said by some not to work when one is unconscious, or at least when one is not conscious of the stimulus in question. Which, if this were the case, might help provide evidence about the consciousness of an animal. Supporting evidence rather than conclusive evidence; just one element of the score. So I may get around to references 7 and 8 below.

Altogether, an interesting digression.

PS: MacCormack is an Australian. So perhaps a Germaine Greer for the third millennium?

References

Reference 1: Animal consciousness: why it’s time to rethink our human-centred approach - Patricia MacCormack, The conversation – 2023.

Reference 2: http://martinedwardes.me.uk/eaorc/index.html. 

Reference 3: https://theconversation.com/uk. ‘The Conversation is an independent source of news analysis and informed comment written by academic experts, working with professional journalists who help share their knowledge with the world’. Supported by donations from readers.

Reference 4: https://www.aru.ac.uk/people/patricia-maccormack.

Reference 5: Neither Man nor Beast: Feminism and the Defense of Animals – Carol J. Adams – 1994, 2018. Book.

Reference 6: Profiles of animal consciousness: A species-sensitive, two-tier account to quality and distribution – Leonard Dung, Albert Newen – 2023. Open access.

Reference 7: Trace Conditioning and the Hippocampus: The Importance of Contiguity – Debra A. Bangasser, David E. Waxler, Jessica Santollo and Tracey J. Shors – 2006. Open access.

Reference 8: Human Eyeblink Classical Conditioning: Effects of Manipulating Awareness of the Stimulus Contingencies - Robert E. Clark, Larry R. Squire – 1999. Paywalled but available online at JSTOR.

Fake 158

Captured in the margins of a visit to Methodist Central Hall in Westminster, more or less opposite Westminster Abbey.

A handsome display if viewed at the right distance in the right light, but the few flowers that I checked were entirely fake, a mixture of fabric and plastic. So I imagine the whole display is fake - with occasional dusting (or perhaps washing) being a lot cheaper than the weekly replacement cycle required for the real thing.

I imagine that there were real flowers in the Abbey opposite, one of the most important venues of the church established in our kingdom, but, if there were, we did not get close enough to make any assessment. Maybe they were having a practise with real flowers there, in preparation for the forthcoming festivities? I don't suppose our new King - the inventor of Duchy Originals after all - would care to share space with fakes.

PS 1: jolly clever the way that the Blog search gadget takes more or less instant notice of new group search keys. Would there be a noticeable delay if one tried them in Honolulu? At one time, if not now, blogs were replicated across a family of country if not continental servers, so plenty of scope for glitches.

PS 2: later: I am reminded this Monday morning that when I was young it was important to know that 'antidisestablishmentarianism' was one of the longest, if not the longest, word to be found in the OED. A product of the Victorian taste for big compounds, possibly emulating in this the then academically pre-eminent Germany.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/04/fake-157.html.

Reference 2: https://www.c-h-w.com/. I learn that the 'Methodist' bit has been dropped from the title of the hall, trying to make its way as an event space. But the Methodist connection survives in the background.

Group search key: fakesk, mch.

German power

[The Neckarwestheim 2 Nuclear Power Station in Neckarwestheim, Germany © Alex Kraus/Bloomberg. One of the three]

A week or so ago, the Germans shut down their last three nuclear power stations, power stations which made up around 6% of their generating capacity, presumably presently operating well below that capacity. A decision which I read about at reference 1 - with my thinking afterwards being that they had made a mistake. Since then a correspondent has drawn my attention to the piece from the BBC at reference 2.

All slightly depressing in that the decision seems to be more a result of political jostling between the various political parties in Germany, rather than of accountants doing sums about the relative costs of nuclear and other fossil fuels - coal & gas - and producing plans to maintain generating capacity during a period of transition. And it looks to me as if, in the short term, they are going to be burning more coal than would otherwise be the case.

The story in both Germany and the UK seems to be that we both had or have modest nuclear capacity, with the balance split more or less equally between other fossils and renewables. With the difference that Germany is now 0% nuclear while we are still around 10%. But I have no idea how long it might take to build enough windmills to replace, say, half the remaining coal & gas. Where are windmills built? What is stopping production being ramped up? Do the Chinese have a hold on windmills?

My short term thinking remains that Germany shutting down capacity in the hand was a mistake. A shutting down which is not now, it seems, reversible.

My long term thinking remains that, for the time being, it would be prudent for the UK to retain some nuclear, maybe even build some more. Fusion is still some years off producing electricity at scale.

That might change if someone produced an eco-balance sheet which showed that using gas, taking everything into account, did less damage to the planet that using nuclear.

References

Reference 1: Germany torn over energy policy as nuclear plants shut down: Berlin to switch off last remaining atomic power plants despite energy crunch and climate obligations - Laura Pitel, Financial Times - 2023. The source of the snap above.

Reference 2: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-65260673.

Reference 3: https://www.alexkrauss.com/. I rather like some of the stuff produced here. Not too arty.

Sunning

At around 17:00 this afternoon, dressed up with jacket, scarf and gloves, it was warm enough to sit out on our back patio and take the sun.

There were some interesting goings on with my eyes shut. Depending on the state of the sun - there was some cloud drifting about - I mostly either saw a sort of mottled black-brown, a sort of mottled blue-green or a patchy red-yellow. This in order of brightness, which presumably accounts for most of the variation. Something to do with absorption of light by the skin and blood of the eyelids?

While sometimes there were shapes moving about, sometimes complicated, generally a bright but pale shape on a darker background.

[lifted from reference 1 below. It cooked to black on the outside, agreeably soft & mushy inside. With what appears to be some barley, rather than the lumps of hard white fat you get in lesser products]

[white puddings - also prone to escape their sell-by date]

The sun going behind a large cloud, back indoors to take some black pudding on brown for tea. Peeled and then fried in a little rape seed oil, it went down very well. Much softer and milder than the black puddings we used to take occasionally from Slomers - from whom we still take white puddings. In fact, rather like foreign black pudding. The only downer being that it must already have been out of date when I bought it. We decided that as a cooked and sealed product it was probably safe enough: looked and smelled OK and nothing untoward has happened so far.

Delving deeper, I turn up reference 1, who will sell a ring, perhaps the same as the one I bought, but at less than half the price.

While the actual manufacturer appears to be a small operation called Pork Traders Oakwell Ltd. With the recipe being a closely guarded secret on an industrial estate on the eastern outskirts of Liverpool, not far from the M62, as snapped above.

While the exemption accounts filed at Companies House tell me very little, apart from there being around 3 employees, including the bosses.

Perhaps more interesting, the document snapped above was delivered by Amazon Web Services from the server farm called EU-West-No.2. Something else for the Brexit crew to deal with. I suppose that Amazon are as good as delivering web services as they are at delivering consumer goods, and for all sorts of applications it is simpler and cheaper to use them, rather than DIY'ing it. Or perhaps Microsoft, whom I believe have a similar offering. Don't know about Google.

PS: I have just learned that my victory by half a length at Scrabble this afternoon was tainted, tainted in that I used the word 'wont' in the cluster of senses around 'was accustomed to'. Checking with OED, I find that this is an old and respectable word, rating several meanings and several columns, but one which has largely fallen into disuse in this country, so obs, while maintaining a good foothold in the US. Ever sporting, BH checked in her rather newer Concise Oxford, which listed the word without comment. Nevertheless, given that we play with the full OED, tainted. A rematch has been scheduled.

References

Reference 1: https://www.greendale.com/product/oakwell-black-pudding-ring. 

Reference 2: https://slomersltd.co.uk/. The rivals from estuary land.